Out of Town

Mayor Richard Daley has been aggressive in transforming Chicago into a more livable city, cracking down on sociopathic motorists, encouraging traffic-calming, promoting bicycling and paying attention to the nitty gritty environmental impacts of street design. The Chicago Tribune recently reported on the Mayor's latest effort to fund citywide park-improvements projects using revenues from city-owned parking garages:

On Sunday in Paris, more than 10,000 bicycles became available at 750 self-service docking stations. The bike program, called Vélib (for "vélo," bicycle, and "liberté," freedom) is supposed to double in size by the end of the year. Pierre Aidenbaum, mayor of Paris's trendy third district, said "For a long time cars were associated with freedom of movement and flexibility. What we want to show people is that in many ways bicycles fulfill this role much more today." The New York Times reports:

Transport for London is out today with its fifth annual Congestion Charging Impacts Monitoring Report. If you've never seen any of the previous reports, it's worth a look. The 279-page document -- you can download the whole thing here -- provides a remarkably detailed assessment of the overall performance of London's surface transportation system (Compare it to the DOT section of Mayor's Management Report here in New York City and you will understand how much catching up we have to do).

Jacobs Babtie, one of the UK's leading consultants in sustainable transport, is banning its own employees from commuting on bicycles or motorbikes after declaring them too dangerous. On the company website, where there is actually a picure of a young boy signaling a right turn on his bicycle, Jacobs boasts that it has an "impressive track record in the rapidly growing field of sustainable transport." This is surely a weak point in that track record. The Times of London reports (via TreeHugger):

The British government's advisor on architecture, urban design and public space just launched a campaign to "declutter" England's streets of thousands of signs and barriers, arguing that the rampant signage may actually result in more perilous streets for pedestrians. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) urged local councils and planners to adopt a radical new approach to street design, taking into account "the needs of pedestrians as well as motorists." The Guardian reports:

The Tyee, an independent online pub in British Columbia, weighs in with the first in a series of editorials making the case for free transit in the province.

Back in April, Marcelo Ebrad, the mayor of Mexico City, announced he wanted those who worked in his administration to ride bicycles to work one day a month (at right, Ebrard, center, kicks off the program). Many were shocked at the idea, or simply laughed it off. But this excellent article in the San Diego Union details how the mayor's decree to his employees has meshed with several other initiatives to raise the profile of bicycling as a legitimate form of transportation in the traffic-clogged city:

Finally, we get to see just how much former executive director Jon Orcutt was tamping down the high-powered talent at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The latest issue of Mobilizing the Region is jam-packed with good articles. Here are some highlights (and, yes, I'm kidding about Orcutt but serious about this week's MTR being really good):

The Boston Globe ran a front-page story yesterday about confrontations among users of the super-popular tree-lined Minuteman Bikeway in Boston. Police have already filed more reports of clashes between users of the bikeway this year than the previous two combined. As the Arlington Police Chief noted, "We have road rage, and now we have bikeway rage."